Silhouette: The Hunter is now the hunted
by Psycho Kinetic 15
Summary: The Left 4 Dead team has gone global. Zoey and Francis have a child. But when he is killed by an intelligent Hunter how far will Zoey go to get revenge.
1. Chapter 1

**Silhouette: The Mind of a Hunter**

In the pale half light that preceded the suns rising I was crouching as still and ready as a statue of a gargoyle that adorned the Venetian churches around me. How I loved Venice in the daytime. I particularly enjoyed that the sun shined through the dark blanket of clouds but rarely. However my greatest joy came from the sense of sub conscious security it gave my prey. Ever since the change had been wrought upon me and I had been changed into a being that my victims called a "hunter" I had stalked through the many streets and canals of Venice to capture and devour the prey that was able to sate my hunger. As I sat in the pre light I glimpsed my first meal of the day. A small boy who had apparently wandered a little too far from his mother and had become lost in the many streets and side roads that made up my territory. He was of medium stature and thin build with short blonde hair and fair skin as pale as milk. His clothes were handmade and saggy. I put his age at around 7 to 9 years old. In one hand he clutched a small fuzzy comfort object that I remembered being called teddy bears. He stopped his careful walking and sat down. He began to cry… for his parents, for his family I didn't know… nor did I care. He was food and nothing more so. A Hunter does not consider how prey feels when it is shot. He does what he must to feed himself. I tasted the boys scent on the air and again marveled as I always did at the way humans smelled. A delicate ambrosial mixture of pheromones, oil, and blood. I crouched even lower on my perch and let out my most chilling cry. A high pitched and grating keen that sent a pheromone spike of fear through the young boy's scent only serving to enhance the flavor of his body. I propelled myself forward in a great leap toward the solitary child. He attempted to run but I landed in front of the fleeing form and with a backhand swipe of my clawed hands sent him sprawling amongst the rubble at my feet. I crouched over him as he laid whimpering and crying under me. His comfort object lay but a few feet away with its face down. I looked into his eyes. Cold lumps of charcoal into sapphires and in that instant the boy screamed as loud as he could. I placed a clawed finger on his lips and hissed "Shhhhh. None of that" in Italian. His eyes widened and I moved my claw under his chin and cut his throat. As the deluge of blood erupted from his neck I lowered myself to the weeping gash and drank the sugary liquid that was pouring from him. I drank until I had drained him and then I moved on to the rest of his body. After I had finished I set up the remains under a cold rock and stood. As I strode away from the bloody remains my foot hit something and I stumbled. The comfort object was still there where it had been dropped. I picked it up and examined it. It was brown and fuzzy with a red bow about its neck. I took an experimental bite and spit it out. Ugh! No meat at all! Only a white and unappetizing fluff. I tossed the thing into the first canal I saw and moved on my way.

"Cade!" cried Zoey as she called her sons name. "Cade!" yelled Francis "Get out here right now boy!" Bill was reclining on a rock and muttering an ever increasing stream of swears as he attempted to light a thick cigar with a sputtering butane lighter. Louis was scouting the canals ahead and had yet to return. "Cade!" yelled Zoey again "Where could he be?" she asked Francis "Well he always liked those old churches a lot." He replied "Maybe he's there." Over on his piece of rubble Bill continued to loose a stream of profanity. "I wait half my life to smoke an Italian cigar and… HALLE- FUCKIN'- LUJAH!!!" he yelled as the lighter ignited… and promptly blew out as a gust of wind swept down the narrow street. As Bill began to weep Louis returned to them with a wet burlap sack that smelled of the river. "Louis!" Zoey burst out. "Where's Cade?" she said as she realized that her son was not with him. Without a word Louis reached into the burlap sack and removed a wet and smelly clump of brown fur. Zoey took it and immediately recognized it for what it was. Cade's teddy bear without its right arm. She looked up at Louis with tear streaked eyes and broke down into wrenching sobs. "I'm so sorry." came Louis voice from above her. Bill had stopped mourning his cigar and now sat in stunned silence. About one hour ago Zoey and Francis's son Cade had wandered away from their safe house and when he did not return Zoey and the others had started searching for him. For 4 hours they had searched and he had not shown up. Louis had even gone diving in the canals looking for him. But now it was obvious that Cade, the light of Zoey's life, was irrevocably, irreversibly, and indisputably… gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter the Second

Once again my perch was too served as a vantage point as I surveyed my city. That's right MY city. Not the Tanks, not the Smokers, and most definitely NOT the Boomers. As the sun rose again, I inhaled deeply taking in the smells of fair Venice. The sweet potpourri of raw sewage, carrion, rusting metal, and dashed hopes, SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSNF! Ahhhhhhh, heaven. It was as I was taking in the scents of my fair city that four mid sized adults entered the courtyard where yesterday I had killed the boy. They carried guns that varied in their size and power. One, a gray haired male, carried a hunting rifle. The others carried Shotguns, M-16's, and Uzi Scorpions. They made their way over too my cold rock where I had stored the boy and halted. The fluff I had regurgitated the other day, along with the comfort objects arm, was lying in front of my cold rock. The woman knelt too collect the arm and began too weep as she did so. Then the white haired man saw me. He yelled and I noticed that the sun had hit me broadside. In the dark I looked like another gargoyle, but now I was revealed for what I was. The bullets tore into my shoulders and chest as the man opened fire. The pain was intense and I tumbled onto the shingling which gave way beneath me and I plummeted into the church below.

Zoey saw the thing fall and yelled in triumph. "Nice shooting Bill!" "No problem, but I don't think its dead." He replied. "Huh?" said Francis and then the door of the cathedral burst its hinges and out stomped a tank, in all its white muscled glory, followed by several normal infected. The group opened fire. Francis cut down a runner in a hail of bullets while Louis took several down. But the tank advanced apace. Even under the combined hail of bullets it came closer and closer…

The pain was what I felt when I came too. I had landed on a pew and a stake of wood had been driven through my stomach. I gingerly got too my feet and removed the foreign object from myself. Tossing the stake aside my one thought was of escape when I beheld the raging firefight just outside the doors. The Tank was putting on a good show but even I could see he was losing steam. "Aw hell" I moaned as the female of the group spotted me and turned her shotgun in my direction. The bowl of stagnant holy water on which I had been supporting myself vaporized and I fell back as a doorway behind my head became perforated by shot pellets. The tank took advantage of this and lifted the rock under which I kept the boys remains.

When the tank wound up too throw the rock at Zoey, Francis dove too catch her as the rock hit a weeping stone angel and sent it tumbling from its plinth. As the dust cleared Francis beheld the remains of someone dangling from the remnants of a car nearby. With a thrill of hatred and sorrow he recognized the ring on the hand… or at least what was left of the hand that hung connected by a few strings of muscle. He jumped and turned as he opened fire in the tanks back, piercing its thick skin and shattering its spine. The thing fell dead and Francis turned too the remaining zombie with a fury unmatched and a sadness so complete that he no longer cared about living. The Hunter would die.

I loped through the catacombs beneath the cathedral and passed many of my brethren who did not have the special abilities that I possessed or the reasoning power too remove themselves from harms way when the bullets started flying. They joined me without question like metal too a magnet. The hole in my belly and shoulders had closed over but my muscles were still working on removing the bullets. I winced as I moved. My guts were pulsing and writhing in an attempt to push the bullets out. Every 5 to 10 seconds one would ping on the floor but with every bullets my body spat out there was another still to be popped. I stopped at the entrance of a small alcove and knelt, panting, in front of it. From the bowels of the darkest corner came the sounds of soft weeping. I stopped panting and my less than special entourage followed suit. I knew that there was something more too fear here in this little stone crevice than there was above ground with those gun wielding psychopaths. I was about 5 feet from the most vicious thing not alive. Witches tend too attack survivors and humans only because the latter make noise and startle it. The smart thing too do in this situation was too back away slowly and quietly. But even if I did… well death by human would be cleaner and quicker than what ever species of death I would suffer if the witch got a hold of me. While they possessed the I.Q. of a rock, instinct played a major role in survival with any of the Normals, and right now their instincts must have been screaming be quiet and don't move because that was exactly what they were doing. Then I felt my body expel the last bullet. Ping. It hit the floor and bounced right into the witches leg. I stopped moving altogether and stopped breathing (Not that I needed to but still, it was a tense moment.) A growl and she was an inch from my face. Sniffing me like a dog she seemed satisfied with the knowledge I would not be edible and returned to crying in her fetal position. My little brush with death, brief as it was, still left me weak at the knees as I turned and ran away on silent feet.

The crypt door was open as the 4 made their way down. The smell of dead things, both old and new, was overpowering down here. Zoey hit her flashlight and the others followed suit as they walked deeper into the catacombs. The air got thinner and more stale the deeper they got and soon they had to take deep breaths to feel even remotely centered. That's when they heard it. A shuffle and a whoosh. Quick as lightning Zoey whipped around and smashed her gun into a charging zombies face. It stumbled back and shrieked its frustration. It charged again and fell back, unmoving, onto the damp catacomb floor as Bill placed a bullet between its eyes. The rifles report was magnified 100 time louder than normal in the tunnel. All assembled covered their ears. That did not blot out the next sound however. A wailing shriek reached them from far off. They all knew the sound and all assembled knew that it would be best if they called off the search and left. They had startled a Witch.

Authors notes: Sorry for the wait. Got lazy and thought I would drop it. But its back!

Your Ardent and Eager slave: Psychokinetic15


	3. Chapter 3

AN: (German Accent) Vassup everybody! Before I start I just wanted to take a moment to tank my fans for writing zee reviews and for not writing zee flames. I also wanted to say vhat an honor it is to be making zee good story writing. SO, vithout further ado here is chapter zee 3 of Silhouette.

**Chapter 3**

The shriek of a thousand damned souls reached my ears as I ran even further into the catacombs. I had heard the gunshot clear as daylight and knew instinctively that whoever had fired it needed to move fast to escape the wrath of the Witch. Through some mental connection all zombies seemed to share (well how do you think we always know where to find you delicious humans even if only one of us spots you) I felt a surge of savage delight. They ceased following my lead and instead ran toward the sound the Witch had made hoping to catch a few morsels of survivor when she had finished them off. I too was torn between survival and satisfaction. The boy was still keeping me relatively satisfied but something about the Witch's shriek awakened something primal in me. A savage need to tear at flesh and sate my bloodlust. I looked down at my claws and was visited with a desire to use them on something. I stood stock still as I wrestled my inner beast down. If I gave in to this urge it was sure death for me. The witch may be strong but 4 against 1 are odds I don't feel to comfortable wagering on. I watched my entourage disappear around a tunnel. "Bloody Scavengers." I mumbled as I kept on moving.

They pounded down a tunnel and rounded the corner. Another dead end greeted them 10 feet down. Spitting a stream of swears that would have had his mother turning in her grave, if she'd still been in it, Bill turned and began sliding shells into his shotgun. They had been running for 10 minutes now and gotten themselves nowhere by moving away from the zombies. Without those bloodthirsty freaks chasing them maybe they could concentrate and find the way out of here. The rest of the group was of the same mind. Years of fighting together as a group had bred an almost telepathic connection between them. Run and they might find the exit before the zombies. Stay and shoot the tits off of anything that came around that corner…

I blinked twice to engage my night vision as I rounded a corner and my already light sensitive eyes showed me total black. I felt a fleshy lens slide down from underneath my eyelids and abruptly the whole world was rendered in a shining purple hue. The lens worked by taking light from my eyes and magnifying it times 100. The only downside was bright light became a painful experience to endure. In front of me was a wall with a sewer pipe sticking from it. I guessed that before the Transcendence (My term for what survivors call the Infection) this had been an undeveloped area of the catacombs that led to sewers. Moving forward I stumbled and fell as a puddle I had previously judged to be a shallow one sucked in my foot up to the ankle. I extricated myself from it and jumped into the pipe. It was just big enough to crouch in and I sat perched on the edge. Slowly I moved forward on all fours into the darkness and the stench of the sewer pipes. Most of the filth had been washed out of the pipes by lack of use. Here and there an odd rat scurried away from me as it gnawed on the bones of a long dead human but that was all the interaction I engaged in on the way through the labyrinthine connection of pipes. Once or twice I chased one to alleviate my foul mood at the events of the past hour. "PEOPLE OF NEW JERUSALEM!!!" A voice so loud that my sensitive ears rang with a high shrill note and I fell back clutching them as I howled in pain The voice continued to speak as I writhed but at a much more tolerable pitch. "Today we celebrate this holiest of days with a grand feast in honor of our lords!" Slowly I stood and just as slowly I crouched as I smacked my head on the metal of the pipes. The sound was close and I only had to turn a corner to see a wide torch lit cave filled with a seething mass of… humans? Young and old, fat and thin, and all were kneeling before a great stone effigy of…. a hunter? No not a hunter. It was a hunter head attached to an amorphous body that sprouted the head of a Bringer of the Fire Water, a Noose of Judas, the upper torso of a Juggernaut of the Host, and a head and body that had a structure similar to mine with one leg still attached to the amorphous mass as it leapt skyward claws outstretched and completely naked. The pipe I was in was situated 2 feet from its face and I had to say I liked what I saw. The humans stood as one and I had to duck back into the pipe to avoid being seen. A great shuffling was heard by my sensitive and then a whoosh followed by a VERY familiar shriek. I chanced a glance down and saw a witch caged in a large quarry that rested beneath the statue. A stone slide connected the floor to the bottom of the arena. A new scream reached my ears as a youth, barely 15 was carried kicking and screaming to the top of this slide, given a sprinkling of herbs, and shoved violently down it. As the youth hit the bottom the cage was opened by some unseen force and out ran the witch. The scene unfolded like some opera of death. The crowd cheered, the witch shrieked, and the boy… well the boy screamed for about 2 seconds before the witch tore his heart from his chest. I watched in utter fascination as the humans then descended one by one into the pit. Some went willingly while others were forced to go, kicking and screaming into the belly of the beast. I purred with pleasure as I leapt out and onto the face of the effigy.

The first zombie to round the corner had its head blown off by a high-powered hunting rifle. Louis silently complemented himself on his shot. Having grown up in the slums of America he had found himself well prepared to flip what he referred to as his "inner switch" which turned ordinary citizens from law abiders into stone cold killers. He had seen his fair share of both growing up and had marveled at how easy it had all been for him. On the day the infection reached his city he had been sitting in his cubicle working, ignoring the racist comments snickered and whispered to his back, when a popup appeared on his monitor. It showed a black man being hung in a tree by the KKK. Someone had photocopied Louis's face onto that of the black mans. Louis sat stunned as he looked at the picture. Quickly he closed the window and stood up too leave. His hasty rise allowed him to catch a glimpse of several snickering co-workers all gathered around a computer terminal. They looked at him and mimed hanging themselves. That was when he had first fought someone and he had done a damn fine job. After refusing to apologize and telling him to "Get his black Louisiana ass back to the cotton fields before they beat him" Louis had grabbed on of them by the hair and slammed them facedown into the desk. The others had grabbed him, tried to restrain him while others hit him, but with strength born of rage he had thrown them off and preceded too beat the living shit out of them. Every ounce of rage over his dead end job, his racist boss and co-workers, and his own personal hate for the hand life had dealt him, flowed through his fists and into the blows they landed. 35 years of accumulated anger pulsed through him and lent greater and greater strength to his body as he punished those responsible for it. After being fired for this incident he had started to walk home when he had seen his first zombie attacking a man Louis knew too be a drug dealer. He had tried to intervene but the zombie had come after him instead. Acting on residual rage he had knocked it down and curb stomped its head into a pulp. The black drug dealer he had sought to help rose as a zombie as well and Louis dispatched him in a similar way. His campaign of violence had turned into justified murder when he realized what was going on around the city. He felt that, for every zombie he killed, he was revenging himself on God for giving him such a shitty life. BLAM! Headshot again, and again. When his gun clicked he reloaded and kept firing into the horde, which was bottled into the tunnel, and too stupid to realize they were going to die as they charged over their dead and towards the wall of lead that flew from the survivor's guns. He could no longer hear anything other than his own heartbeat as the sounds of the guns in the small space had deafened him. He could still see however, and what he saw next scared even him. Something unseen in the horde was advancing on them. Cutting a swath through the infected as it approached, tossing them aside like so many sticks in a high wind. Then it shrieked and Louis knew that headshots would do him no good now. The Witch had finally caught up with them.

I slowly descended the edifice like a spider as I observed the slaughter in the gladiatorial pit. I hadn't thought it possible but after five meals of seasoned human cultist, she was tiring. A Witch… tired? That was like saying fire didn't want to burn or wind was just too lazy too blow. The humans were reaching a pitch with their jeering and chanting when the Witch killed her 7th victim. Now they had pulled out drums of leather and were pounding them fast. The tempo was intoxicating and blood stirring at the same time. I felt again the urge to kill and eat my fill. With an immense effort I repressed my inner beast. Wait, I thought, it's not over yet. The Witch was clutching her belly, swollen with meat in a grotesque imitation of pregnancy, and moving slowly as the drummers played. A final human slid down the slide into the pit and landed in a practiced move. A woman this time, who strode forward without fear. The witch waddled toward her as her claws extended, the girl held out her own arm as the witch got closer, and she bit the girl on the arm. In one motion the girl drew a dagger and sliced the witch open from stomach too collarbone. Meat slid from her and piled on the ground in a pile that was so large it was amazing that all of it came from one Witch. The drums stopped and the people cheered as the girl held her bitten arm high for all too see as she stood over the dying Witch. "I am the next! I am the Guardian!" she cried. A lift descended and carried her too the top of the arena again. As she stepped out of the lift I could see the paleness of her skin and the tightening of her muscles were already transcending her. However she did not cry out or give any outward sign of pain as she walked between two large men armed with crude spears, which I could only assume was an honor Guard, away from the crowd and behind a curtain. Her lack of expression struck me as an amazing feat. My own transcendence had wracked me with pain tantamount to being fed into a slow running meat grinder while boiling acid was pumped through my veins and my flesh was aflame. The humans were now silent again as men descended into the pit too carry up the meat. This they feasted on over open cook fires and roasted on spits. The priest waited until it was cooked before he said, in that booming voice of his that so annoyed me, "Now we partake of the flesh of those who came before us so that their power may become ours and we may begin our pilgrimage too the surface world!" Then someone saw me. "Look, a messenger has been sent too lead us too our promised land!" I was hanging in a rather compromising position, hanging from the abundant member of my statue, and had swung into the torchlight. Not wanting to be caught by these people I clambered up too my entrance pipe and moved into it, even as the humans below began too climb after me.

Alone amongst the dead the survivors recoiled as the witch leapt at them, swinging its claws at them wildly. Zoey backpedaled and pumped a shot into the Witch's face as she cried out for help. Merely stunned, the Witch stumbled backwards as it head snapped back with a loud crack. Zoey stopped moving back and started sliding more shells into the shotguns chamber. The witch stood still as its neck lolled, the shot seemed to have moved its spine up two inches, and then slid back into place with a series of pops and crackles. Without wasting a second the Witch charged again, claws outstretched and shrieking for all it was worth, toward Zoey. Zoey slid the last shell in and pumped the shotgun. CHA-CHACK! The shell slid into the chamber and was immediately discharged toward the Witch. The shot pellets found their marks in the Witch's pale flesh, gouging paths and punching craters, as she advanced. Behind the Witch the few infected who had survived her mad rush toward the survivors advanced in her wake, trampling the corpses of the fallen in an attempt to get ahead of the others, while the other survivors attempted too keep them from getting too them and adding another problem to the already considerable one that was bearing down on them with claws that could slice through steel. CHA-CHACK! Again Zoey fired, again the shot buried itself in the Witch, and still she ran on. CHA-CHACK! Zoey brought the gun up and instead of firing screamed and held it up in front of her as the Witch tackled her, football style, and brought her down. "Zoey!" Francis cried as he saw his wife taken too ground. He ran forward but several infected leaped over Zoey and the Witch, who were grappling fiercely as the Witch attempted too bite and claw her, and he was forced too defend himself. On the ground Zoey grabbed the Witch by the wrist as it swung its claw down at her, having straddled her, and halted its deadly descent. She did the same with the other and held on even as the Witch's claws extended to their full length and stopped an inch from her face. The Witch opened its mouth and threw its whole body forward in an attempt too bite her and at that moment Zoey swung her own head up and crashed her forehead against the Witch's. Rearing back the Witch fell off of Zoey stunned. Rising, Zoey drew her pistol and placed a final bullet between the Witch's eyes, finally silencing its infernal shrieks. Behind her the other 3 had finished killing the final zombies that had attacked them and were running up too her. Francis got there first and hugged her too him, sobbing with relief into her shoulder, and kissed her hard. Too dazed by her impromptu head-butt too respond she simply let herself be held until she came back too her senses. Louis and Bill watched on, both jealous in their own way. Bill lit a cigar with the red-hot end of his M-16 and took a deep drag. "If every fight ended like this it wouldn't be a bad thing."

**A.U.: Me again! This chapter was I think the longest I've ever written. Please R and R! Your Ardent and eager slave: Psychokinetic15**


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